During a panel discussion on urban growth, sponsored by the Libertarian Party of San Francisco, urban growth and transportation expert Randal O'Toole told those attending that traffic jams are largely caused by human indecsion.
He argued that driverless cars run by computers will be much better at making split-second decisions and thus keep traffic flowing smoothly and eliminate most traffic jams.
I would imagine that computers won't slow to rubber-neck either.
O'Toole expects the first driverless cars to be on the road in about five years.
-RW
Having driven in several S. American countries & motorcycled around most of Ecuador, I can tell you that decentralization in addition to little regulation in terms of traffic management makes a huge difference in the rate of flow of traffic.
ReplyDeleteWhen motorcycling in Ecuador, I was especially struck by the lack of traffic lines outside Quito and how easily and speedily traffic flowed.
Now that being said, that environment isn't great for those of limited skill- but most older people for example, were not driving either- they were riding buses and/or taking taxi's and/or being driven.
I've noticed this in Europe. The riff-raff take the bus, leaving the roads clear for serious drivers. (God, I'm such a SNOB)
Delete" (God, I'm such a SNOB)"
DeleteNah, it's just reality. A free market traffic system works just like a free market economic system.
In the big picture, if you're a believer, it's super efficient and better for everyone.
Nick, you're right about "little regulation in terms of traffic management". Here, I've noticed that Yield signs posted at the entrances to roundabouts cause hesitation and confusion where the roundabouts exist on public roads. On private roads such as the ones in large shopping centers drivers in roundabouts behave more sensibly in the absence of state owned Yield signs.
DeleteThe only way robot cars could avoid traffic jams is if somebody coercively controlled the number of vehicles using the road or highway at any given time. Even this wouldn't really stop them but only hide them at on ramps or in people's garages if they were prevented from even starting their cars. I suspect road and highway usage would look more like the existing airlines transportation system and people's travel schedules would be ruled by the highway administration. The only thing necessary to minimize traffic jams is to allow free market pricing in the building and use of transportation systems including roads and highways. But this has been known in the U.S. since at least the early 1900's when private automobiles, public cabs and jitneys quickly bankrupted trolleys and busses. These latter systems were resurrected by government coercive regulations and subsidies and the trade-off was to publicly subsidize roads and highways. The might makes right crowd is the ultimate source of traffic jams.
ReplyDeletewe get traffic jams because q-in is greater than q-out. When q-in > q-out the difference has to be stored on the roads. Government's solution to congestion because it makes too much money from 'speeding' tickets is to add lanes. Add storage to push increase the time it takes to reach saturation. The real solution is to increase q-out. Automated cars of course will increase obedience to the speed limit and reduce q-out. This failure will result in controls of who can use the roads when.
DeleteSo, will self-driving cars be forced to go 55???
ReplyDeleteTo me the bigger question is whether the self-driving car will have a blacklist of both dissidents and locations it can not service because the operating system has the power to censor in much the same way as Google Ad-Sense terminated working with Antiwar.com.
ReplyDeleteI know peoples do not want to hear this but there is move to limit and censor the movements of Americans in this country. The self driving car is a big part of this state controlled apparatus to decide who is free to move, and where they may travel within the bounds of state approved limits.
What I see is a 21st century variant on the use of land enclosure which accelerated under both King Henry VIII, and Queen Elizabeth I to point where the poor and middle class were turned into vagrants by the state. In 1572 the Vagrancy Act was enacted and people who were out of work were not allowed to move to find work, and faced being branded if they were out of work for more than a few days in the same location. The combination of enclosure and vagrancy made people subject to the full power of the state in regard to housing, work, and freedom of movement. The state had created a problem with a solution in mind that made people non-entities in the eyes of the state.
The self-driving car is an important piece of the state sponsored lockdown mechanism of our age. Our freedom is being garroted with such subtle and fashionable methods that the end result is unrecognized by the public.
I have grown tired of people still seeing this 1950s vision of automated cars and/or roads of head to tail 100mph effortless travel and all the rest. That vision died a long time ago with Ralph Nader, Joan Claybrook, and Richard Nixon's National Speed Limit and all that grew from those things. Automated roads will enforce the visions of Nader and Claybrook and their fellow travelers. Traffic in this country breathes through defiance. That's how it works. That's why National Motorists Association and individuals like myself consider an act of protest to obey the speed limits and other nonsense. Obeying it in mass will cripple the roads. That's what the machines will create, forced obedience.
ReplyDeleteEven those who think we will get something like that seen in "Demolition Man" are wrong.Automated cars and roads will be government planning on steroids. The first round of automated cars will result in horrible congestion as the nature of being programming of government shows itself. The solution will be to control when and where people can drive to fix the congestion problem. Driving will get worse with each 'solution'.
Good points, Jimmy Joe. The truth is, I think, that the state engineered system of automated cars/roads isn't even possible, let alone feasible. Government employees and contractors can't engineer their own lunch breaks, let alone anything as complicated as an interactive website.
DeleteThe non-functional nature of government administered websites should serve to illustrate the impossibility of government administered automatic roads or cars. It ain't gonna happen, is my prediction.